Get Your Guns
by ohponthavemercy
Summary: She could hear them above her own thundering footsteps, above the heavy drum of her heart, above the blood rushing in her ears – the slow scraping of their feet across dilapidated hardwood floors, inexorable as the tide, coming to sweep her away. (clace zombie apocalypse au. expect the requisite amounts of violence and bloodshed, as well as mentions of character death. COMPLETE.)
1. Chapter 1

**Note: Title taken from the song by The Darling Buds, Jamie Campbell Bower's band. I do not own them or the characters from TMI; they belong to Cassandra Clare. However, if you could let me know where I could get a Jace Lightwood or a Jamie Campbell Bower, I would not be averse to the idea. **

She could hear them above her own thundering footsteps, above the heavy drum of her heart, above the blood rushing in her ears – the slow scraping of their feet across dilapidated hardwood floors, inexorable as the tide, coming to sweep her away.

If only she could find a way out of this stupid, stupid place, she thought furiously. It had seemed harmless enough, just a hotel that had once been beautiful and proud, now dying away. She'd entered it in the hopes of finding her mother, since she'd been there last to paint the fading grandeur – a feeble hope, but better than never knowing what had happened to Jocelyn Fray. Or at least, she'd thought that at the time. Now, with a rising horde of the undead trailing after her as she fished in her jacket for a pistol, Clary felt hopelessly outnumbered.

They came closer, slowly, painfully, blood-streaked and filthy. Their eyes were the worst part, she decided, eyes that had once been human, but were now dull. Dull as their feet on the marble floor, dull as their voices, raising in a wordless moan.

But the crackle of glass shattering was as sharp as a knife as a black figure rolled through the window.

At first she thought it was another one, but as the figure somehow gracefully landed by her side, the idea seemed more and more ridiculous. It was impossible to mistake this young man, his hair a tousled lion's mane around the angles of his face, as anything but alive, especially not when he looked down at her with eyes the color of crystallized amber.

"Who the hell are you?" Clary demanded, as he brandished what looked like a revolver attached to the handle of a machete as long as his forearm.

Despite the shadows converging in on them, his eyes shone with a fierce sort of joy, even as he turned from her to the crowd approaching them. "Someone who saw you walk into a den full of zombies."

"You came in after me," she felt the need to point out mutinously.

He shrugged. "Maybe I just like rescuing pretty girls."

Then he was already leaping forward at the first of the undead's ranks before she could respond, slicing through the ones that stepped too close. Suddenly re-energized, she squeezed the trigger of her own gun, the sweet smell of gunpowder flaring up around her.

"Get behind me," the man panted, suddenly drawing nearer to her once more. His fingers rested lightly on the crook of her elbow. "If we can get to that door," he jerked his chin at a door at the other side of the room, "there's a staircase down to the alley outside."

She casted a wild glance about her as she fired a round off into the flannel-covered chest of a man – rather, what once was a man. Behind her, he was deftly shearing off the head of another with the blade, before shooting into the crowd. "We can't – there's too many of them."

"Have a little faith," he replied, and even through the blood and gore, his voice was as cool and sardonic as if he was commenting on the unfortunate color of the wallpaper. All of a sudden, bullets sprayed from outside of the windows, shards of glass scattering like fallen stars across the floor. "Mmm, just in time."

On the other side of the room, a young woman kicked down the door, the coils of something thick and heavy resting in her arms like a giant black serpent. "Over here!"

Clary found herself being tugged through the crowd as her rescuer alternately cleaved and shot through it, the rhythmic pop of gunfire accompanying them. Ahead, the woman at the door fiddled with something, and all of a sudden the serpent in her arms writhed to life, water blasting out of it with a screeching roar. The stinging pressure of the fire hose caused the undead around them to throw up their hands, crying out in pain, while the woman yelled an impatient "Come on!"

Heavy breathing fogged up her ears as she was jostled along in the dark, the woman on her heels and the man jogging lightly ahead of her, his grip on her hand only loosening when they reached the end.

The door finally swung open the third time he threw his shoulder against it, releasing them into the urban filth that was a New York alley. She'd never been more grateful for the sight, bolting through the puddles of refuse to the street, where three motorcycles were parked up against the curb.

It wasn't until they were in the sunlight of afternoon did she realize that her rescuers weren't adults at all, but teenagers only a few years older than herself, just a girl flicking a long dark plait over her shoulder and a boy who was turning back at her with amusement. Another one had emerged out of nowhere, a black-haired boy with a sniper rifle on his shoulder and the same pale skin and tall frame as the other girl. Her brother, Clary guessed.

She wasn't given much time to make note of this, however, before an impish grin flashed at her, bright as a blade. Amused eyes met hers. "Quit staring and hop on."

The moment she slid onto the seat, the bike veered away from the curb with a rumbling growl, forcing Clary to throw her arms around the waist of her rescuer. She felt rather than heard his laughter. "It's alright, I'm an excellent driver."

She would have made a derogatory remark at this, but then he made such a sharp turn that Clary shrieked and clutched his belt (though she later would deny this).

She would not, however, deny that she was grateful when he finally pulled to a stop. As she shakily dismounted, she peered up at him. "I think there's glass in your hair."

He arched a blond eyebrow with a smirk. "Well, I've often been told I'm quite dazzling to the eye."

She ignored him and turned, noticing the high arches and white plaster of the building in front of them. "Why are we at a church?"

A female voice cut in, irritated and sharp as a whip. "Yes, indeed, Jace, why are we at the church? Why did we bring her here?" Clary whirled around only to find the black-haired girl from earlier converging on her like a harpy. "Why the hell did you even wander in that hotel in the first place, stupid girl? You almost got Jace killed."

Clary lifted her chin. "I was trying to find my mother. That was the last place I saw her."

"See, Isabelle? She probably doesn't have anyone else or anywhere else to go. Why not bring her here?" Jace pointed out. She whirled on him, about to bite out a response, but he just raised both eyebrows innocently. "What, you don't, right?"

She sighed exasperatedly. "Well, no."

"We can't just bring in outsiders," Isabelle's brother stepped up. Though his eyes were a brilliant blue compared to his sister's dark brown, the unwelcoming look in them as he glanced over at her was the same.

"Why not?" At this point, Jace's voice was beginning to have an edge to it. "I thought that was what we were trained for. To help others in times like this."

Clary glanced around in confusion. "What do you mean, 'trained for'? Do you mean for… attacking the undead?" Strange as it sounded, it made sense once she thought about it – no three normal teenagers had that much skill with firearms and fighting.

"Now you've done it," the other boy threw his hands in the air. "Honestly."

Jace glared, crossing his arms. "It's not like there's anyone else anymore, Alec. There's no harm in her knowing if we're the only ones left."

Isabelle clenched and unclenched her jaw slowly, her thoughtful gaze sliding over to Clary uneasily. "Oh, alright. We can discuss this inside then."

They called the church "the Institute". Once a training ground for some division of the government assigned to prepare for "events such as this", as Isabelle airily put it, it was now a shelter for the three teenagers, seeing their families had been lost when the apocalypse had first shaken their world.

"So we were trained, in the event of a zombie apocalypse, to find survivors and protect them," Alec informed her stiffly as they sat in the pews. Behind him, Jace leaned against a wall, twirling his pistol sword on a finger casually.

"And that's why you came after me," Clary raised an eyebrow at the blond. "I don't need your protection."

He placed a hand to his chest, eyes widening at her as if hurt. "How quickly you dismiss my sense of chivalry. Well, if you despise my company so, you can leave if you like."

"Wait," she cut him off before he could fling open the massive doors of the church. "Like you said, it's not like I have anywhere else to go."

She would have sworn there was a glint of relief and maybe triumph in those sunlit eyes as he turned around. "Well, now. Are you asking to stay?"

And that is how she came to call the Institute her home, over the next couple weeks. Jace was only too happy to give her a tour of its grounds, which were surprisingly extensive behind the main sanctuary. It made a strange home, but she learned to navigate its winding hallways and the quirks of both the building and its inhabitants. Isabelle, she learned, had to be avoided at all costs whenever she was "cooking" in the snug kitchen, because to enter would be to court disaster and possible food poisoning, while Alec was normally found in the training room or the weaponry, cleaning the rifle that was practically an extension of his arm. And if she heard rippling sonatinas and etudes trailing through the chambers of the abandoned cathedral at night, that was Jace at the piano, in the music room only he and Clary ever seemed to enter.

Alec and Jace had boarded up the stained-glass windows of the first floor, but she'd gotten used to the light that made its way through the slits in between the wooden panels, casting a kaleidoscope of reds and greens and blues across the floor. She loved to lie on the cool wood, sketching the gilded angels that flew above on the ceiling.

"You're rather good," Jace commented once out of the blue, leaning over the back of the pew.

She turned, nearly knocking her nose into his jaw. He was so close she could smell him, soap and limes. Thankfully, he was too busy looking at her drawing to see her blush – or maybe he had. In the short time that she'd known him, she'd rapidly grown to understand that Jace noticed everything. Clary shook her head. "You should have seen my mother's drawings. They were beautiful. Everything she did was," she said. "I know it's sort of hard to believe now –"

He glanced up from the sketchbook, eyes meeting hers, so close she could see the individual flecks of darker gold. The light from the windows cast dancing patterns in his hair. "No, I can believe that."

She jumped like a scalded cat as a jarring cough resounded behind them. "Excuse me, but Izzy wants to go shopping before the electricity dies."

Alec was leaning against a column, looking mildly irritated. "Shopping?" Clary echoed, her voice embarrassingly uneven.

Jace shifted next to her, whatever it was she had seen glinting in his eyes earlier replaced by his usual wry amusement. "You didn't think we had an endless supply of food and clothing, did you? Or weapons, for that matter."

Clary raised an eyebrow. "They sell weapons at Costco?"

Alec made a strangled noise. It took a second for her to realize he was laughing, shoulders shaking with the effort of holding it back. Jace, on the other hand, was rolling his eyes towards the ceiling. "Dear Heaven, the innocents that we have been entrusted with." He shot her a wide smirk. "Clarissa, anything and everything can be used as a weapon. In the hands of an expert, that is."

"That's the catch, isn't it," Alec mumbled.

It was eerie, pushing a shopping cart down aisles completely devoid of people. She'd always been used to the hustle and bustle of children begging for snacks, mothers evaluating two different brands of merchandise, the beeping and clicking of the check-out machines. Now even the squeaking of the cart's wheels as they bumped along the slick floor and Jace's teasing at Isabelle up ahead couldn't hide the oppressing silence.

Clary eyed the overflowing shelves. "This feels so weird."

"I feel the same way," a voice came up from behind her. It was Alec, his voice quietly sympathetic. "Almost sacrilegious, like we're disturbing it. Wrong, somehow."

She nodded in agreement, and Alec smiled. Unlike his sister, it seemed to be a rare motion for him, but whenever he did, it lit up his pale, carved features, making his cobalt blue eyes look like twin will-o'-wisps. "Yeah. But you know, you do what you have to do to survive." He glanced over at them, Jace hip-checking Isabelle as she longingly scraped her fingers along the front of a fur-trimmed black parka. "And I'd do anything to keep them safe and happy, you know?"

She followed his line of sight. Isabelle had taken the parka and was currently slapping Jace with the sleeves as he tilted his head back, hands thrown up against the fabric onslaught and flaxen curls shaking with laughter. Almost as if he had sensed her gaze, he turned, mouth twisted in that infuriating lopsided smirk. "I know what you mean."

It was on one of these excursions that they met Maia, with her bouncing brown ringlets and no-nonsense attitude, and Jordan, her gentle giant of a boyfriend with a sweet voice that gradually started to accompany the sound of Jace's piano at night. Magnus came later, with his multitude of colored scarves and angled, catlike eyes that shone green-gold that would wink with mischief.

They saw other survivors, sometimes, as they paced the streets, but they would skitter away like startled pigeons into the shadows that they came from. She grew used to the frightened stillness, the lack of the obnoxious roar of traffic that she had missed so much at first, that one never-ending rumble that had characterized her New York City. Neon signs that had once crackled through the night dangled precariously off plaster walls, while the glossy windows of storefronts were now full of gaping holes more often than not. She caught their reflection in one of the few intact storefronts and had been almost startled at the sight, lean, hardened teenagers with their angular faces and blunt gazes, a certain sharpness to their features that softened whenever they looked at each other. Like they belonged, somehow, together, in this crumbling, dangerous new world.

A heavy and black-inked arm descended on her shoulder. "Well now, are you liking what you're seeing?"

She glanced up at his face in the reflection. "Hmm, not as much as you're probably enjoying your view, my narcissistic friend."

He returned her smile from under a pair of dark Ray Bans he'd stolen somewhere. "Oh, more than you know."

"That's very nice and all, but if you're done admiring yourselves, there's more interesting things inside the building." Isabelle called out irritatedly.

Jace grumbled, "I highly doubt that," but entered the abandoned Walmart anyway. Magnus had apparently noticed some lost survivors around the place the other day, so they'd all come down to check it out and offer help.

The familiar red logo Clary had seen all her life was hidden under layers of dust and cobwebs. Overhead, the florescent lights had long since died out, but some of them occasionally crackled back to humming life for a few seconds. Fallen bottles of nail polish spilled a rainbow of sparkly liquid across the dirty tile, mixing with Cheerios from an overturned shelf in the dry food section. Glass from the screen of what she suspected was an HD TV crunched underfoot.

"Magnus, you sure you saw someone here?" Maia whispered in the dark, scanning her flashlight over their surroundings as they passed through the aisles gingerly.

Magnus nodded. "I don't know what happened to them."

Isabelle shrugged before cupping her hands around her mouth. "Hello? Anyone there?" Her voice echoed unsettlingly off the walls. "Hello?"

Shadows moved at the edge of her peripheral vision. She whirled. "Hey, Maia, shine your flashlight over here." Maia turned, moving her arm obligingly.

Clary almost wished she hadn't.

There was a whole pack of them, their eyes glassy as marbles in the yellowish beam of the light, some of their throats gaping and open under the collars of work shirts and t-shirts, teeth the color of aged ivory bared in grotesque smiles in faces like crumpled paper.

"I guess you know what happened to them now," Jace muttered, right before he yelled, "Run!"

They bolted like deer, scattering in the dark. Ahead, Jordan was knocking shelf after shelf after shelf over in an attempt to slow them down, and Isabelle's heels clattered like gunshots in her ears just above the steady stream of Magnus' cursing. Maia had found the aisle of fire extinguishers, the undead's skulls crumpling under its weight as she wielded them like a hammer whenever the white foam ran out.

"Jace…" She said uneasily, as she aimed for a zombie's eyesocket.

The sound of his gunblade shearing through flesh and bone never stopped. "What now?" He asked brusquely from his position atop a glass display, his breathing harsh.

Her knife sliced through someone's chest cavity, and she tried to ignore how the blade came away slick with blood so dark it was almost black. It never got easier for her, no matter how much training Alec or Isabelle or Jace gave her. "There's too many."

She never understood how his laughter came so easy even in bloodstained, screeching chaos. "You said that the first time we met."

Clary almost smiled involuntarily. "This is an entirely different situation."

The display came toppling down at last, but he had already leapt down beside her. His breath was hot on her cheek. "I only reserve the term 'situation' for times of great distress. This is not a situation." Despite his words, his eyes were troubled, darting over the crowd uneasily as he reloaded.

Bullets falling like rain all around her, Clary finally noticed the dim red glow of a familiar sign. "Emergency exit, everybody get out!" She reached out and grabbed Jace's sleeve, pulling him along as the group thundered through, leaping over counters and fallen merchandise.

"They'll – they'll follow us," Alec panted in front of them.

Isabelle's braid was lashing through the dark like a whip after her as she ran. "Just get out, we've got to get out –"

Jugs of some unknown liquid sloshed all around her as Clary's shoulder knocked into a shelf. Jace pulled her to her feet roughly. "Come on, Clary, come on!"

She groped around her, barely recognizing the smell. "No, wait, hang on a second –"

" - We don't have a second!" His voice was the most panicked she'd ever heard it. Ahead of them, Magnus and Alec had already reached the exit, Isabelle and Maia loping close on their heels. She refused to look at what was coming behind her as she took out her knife and started slicing through the thick gray plastic. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Just trust me!" A torrent of liquid stained her boots, the smell of gasoline heavy in the air. Jace had finally gotten the idea, eyes wide, and was cleaving through the larger aluminum tanks with the same relentless fury he'd used to deal with the undead. "Now give me your gun."

He looked at her like she was insane. "What? Clary, we won't get out in time!"

"I'm out of bullets. Give me your gun, Jace." She gave him a half-smile over the last tank. "You're fast. You'll be fine."

He exhaled sharply before handing his handgun over, looping his arm in hers. "I'm not leaving you here."

The first of the undead came around the corner. "Then run!"

They flew towards the exit, Jace pulling her along, boots squeaking on the tile, and just at the last moment, she half-turned and shot directly into the stream of gasoline.

A warm body slammed her into the ground of the parking lot before the explosion hit.

For a moment before she closed her eyes, all she saw was red fire and golden hair.

When she opened them, the world was soft blackness. And then it moved.

"You okay?" Jace was still on top of her, staring down concernedly. His face was streaked with soot and blood.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine," she said, breathing hard. "And I think I lost your gun."

He laughed as he rolled off of her, lying on his side in the asphalt. "That's alright. It doesn't matter." Jace glanced over. "I've got you, don't I?"

She froze. His amber eyes shone in the light of the flames that were consuming the building, mere inches away. And she couldn't look away.

"Clary! Jace! Oh my God, are you guys okay?" The rest of the gang had found them, fluttering around anxiously.

Jace rolled to his feet first, chuckling wryly as Clary slowly sat up. "Izzy, Izzy, calm down, we're fine," she soothed.

"Really, we are. Although I am starving," Jace stretched, arching his back like a cat.

Alec rolled his eyes. "If that doesn't tell you they're fine, I don't know what will."

Halfway down the avenue as they strolled back to the Institute, somebody's arm coiled lazily around Clary's shoulders. "You're crazy, you know that?" Jace's breath tickled the shell of her ear. "Absolutely crazy."

She looked at him, bruised and weary and still giving her that crooked smile. "I learned from the best."

They were walking down a similar avenue on a different day, she and Jace, when she saw Simon.

Maia and Isabelle were apparently busy attempting to bake, while last she had checked, Jordan and Alec were in some sort of knife-throwing competition with Magnus as judge, so it was just the two of them.

" – it's absolutely ridiculous, everyone knows I'd beat them both hands down," Jace was saying jokingly, but Clary had long stopped listening ever since she'd seen the shadow with a familiar "NERDS RULE" t-shirt. "Clary? Wow, if you think I'm boring, there are other ways to let me know without hurting a man's feelings…"

She was squinting down the street, looking for the familiar glint of sunlight reflecting off a black pair of square-lensed glasses. Seeing her face, Jace's tone immediately turned serious. "What's wrong?"

It couldn't be. Not her best friend, not the boy who had carried her to the nurse when she'd fallen off the swings that day in preschool, not her gangly, dorky, gamer boy who had always been there for her, through countless sleepovers and movie marathons and every fight she'd ever had with her mother, who'd joined a band in middle school that she privately thought was the worst ever, who she'd always thought of as her twin brother, no. Not her Simon, who'd known her better than anyone else in the world.

Clary raised her voice tentatively. "Si?"

The zombie jerked in its tracks, some form of memory causing it to turn at the sound of her calling that nickname only she'd ever been allowed to use, heading down the street. She lunged. "Simon!"

Immediately tattooed arms wrapped around her.

She lashed out thoughtlessly. "Let me go, let me go! Simon! Simon! Jace, let me go!"

Instead of loosening, his grip only tightened, pulling her back against a strong chest. "Don't, Clary. You can't go to him."

"He's my best friend," she shrieked. "Let me go, please! Simon!"

She wasn't even aware Jace had pulled out his gunblade until she heard the bullet ricochet off the asphalt, Simon's gray body recoiling. "What are you doing? You're hurting him!" She made a dive for the weapon, but his right arm was still firmly snug around her.

"No, look closer." His voice was level, even, as he pulled the trigger repeatedly. She quieted momentarily to watch as Jace, who never missed, hit the ground around Simon's feet over and over again.

She squirmed in his arms. "Stop, you're scaring him off, stop!" He finally lowered it, but Simon was already turning away, heading back into the alley from where he came.

Clary wailed, "What have you done?" She turned on him suddenly, raking his cheek with her nails, not caring when blood welled up under her fingertips. "What have you done?" He barely flinched. "Let me go, goddamnit, Jace, let me go!"

He continued to remain in infuriatingly silent, accepting her blows without a word. They sank to the ground together in a heap of limbs as she pounded on his chest helplessly.

Eventually his arms did loosen, and she toppled to the pavement at the sudden motion. She glared up at him. His expression was stony as he regarded her quietly, the four welts across his cheekbones pulsing and red.

"I hate you," she spat furiously. A small measure of triumph blossomed in her at the way he flinched before she stalked back to the church, fuming silently.

She marched straight into her room, slamming the door behind her. Underneath her, she could hear the sound of Isabelle's concerned footsteps pattering on the linoleum in the kitchen, the rise and fall of Magnus' questioning voice, Jace's low answering rumble, uncharacteristically empty of its usual sarcastic lilt.

Clary thought back to when she had scratched him. His eyes had narrowed in pain when she'd hissed in his face, even as he had accepted her nails scraping on his skin without a blink. As if her hatred were worse than any injury she could ever inflict. But then she remembered Simon, in the faded green t-shirt she'd bought him herself for his last birthday, and his hair, matted and tangled but unmistakably that chestnut shade she'd painted once, in a portrait of their families together for Christmas, Jocelyn's loving expression next to his goofy smile.

That was all before, she thought, before the world had ended and her mother had disappeared and Simon had become one of them, before she'd been stuck in this echoing, enormous church with a family she'd never thought she'd ever have, and now she'd probably gone and lost them. She rolled over at this thought, burying her face in her pillow, overcome with loneliness.

She wasn't aware that she had even fallen asleep until someone opened her door. A panel of light fell on the bed and disappeared just as quickly as the door shut. She squeezed her eyes shut and pretended to sleep as light footsteps, soft as a cat's, crossed the floor.

"Clary?"

She opened her eyes and met serious golden ones for a heartbeat before rolling over. "Go away, Jace, I don't want to talk to you."

He sighed. "That's alright, I'll just talk to you." There was a rustling noise, and the mattress dipped as if he'd sat on the edge of her bed. "I never told you Alec and Isabelle had a brother, did I?"

He didn't wait for a response, just continuing quietly in the dark. "His name was Max. I think you would have liked him – at least, he would have liked you," he chuckled. "He liked animes, mangas, that kind of thing. He was – he was like the little brother I never had. Maryse and Robert, Alec and Isabelle's parents, they practically raised me. My mother died when I was born, and my father never really paid attention to me after I turned ten." His voice turned almost wry. "That collection of weapons in the library and my gunblade were the only things he left me.

"Anyway, Max loved to follow us around. Everywhere. It was like having a puppy always at your heels. He was more like Isabelle than Alec – never mind the danger, as long as he was part of the action."

She rolled back over. "That's more you than Isabelle."

He smirked briefly. "That may be. Listen now. The day after the apocalypse, Alec, Isabelle and I left him home and went to investigate to see if we could find their parents. When we came back, he was gone." The laughter had completely left his face now. "He came back, though. We found him at the garden gate a little over twelve hours later, in the morning. He had Turned. He was only ten, all big blue eyes staring at us through the iron gate. How could we not let him in?"

She sucked in a breath, but Jace kept on going, the words falling out of him like stones. "We kept him in the toolshed and brought him food and water. We thought, you know, he's so young, maybe he's different, maybe we can train him, wake up his memories of being human somehow. We came out every day to come see him. I spent hours in that toolshed. We got to the point where he could talk, a little, just his name. He was tame, we said. Until one day Izzy came down to the shed with his breakfast and he nearly bit her like a rabid dog."

Clary propped herself up on her elbows, eyes wide. "What did you guys do?"

"What we had to do." He raised his eyes to meet hers, and suddenly she didn't have the heart to ask which of them had done it.

She exhaled slowly. "I'm still mad at you for holding me back, but I understand why you did. And, for what it's worth, I'm sorry for scratching you." Reaching over in the dark, she traced the lines her nails had left in his pale golden skin gently. "You know, you'd think that one of these days you'd realize you don't need to rescue me."

"I know that." He reached up to catch her hand in his. Biting his lip thoughtfully, he appeared to be searching for words – her Jace, who never ran out of sarcastic comments and teases. "I wasn't trying to rescue you from Simon. He loved you enough that he still knew you, he remembered you. He wouldn't have hurt you, not deliberately, not until the very end, like Max, when all of the human in him was gone. But I knew you'd try to help him somehow, and it wouldn't have worked. I know you, Clary – you'd do anything in your power to save someone you loved."

They lapsed into a comfortable silence after that. She settled down on her left arm, her other hand warm in his grasp. "Can you – can you stay?"

He shrugged. "I'll stay as long you want."

She smiled, pressing her cheek against the cool cotton sheets. "Jace?"

"Yeah, Clary?"

"You know I don't hate you, right? I never did."

She didn't hear his response, because she had fallen asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

"Come on, it's perfectly safe," Jace reassured the next day. She might have felt soothed, except his voice was strained from holding back laughter.

"I swear you've got like, a demon hiding in the engine or something," she informed him grouchily. He'd apparently woken up with the impression that she really ought to learn how to ride one of their motorcycles, since obviously there was no other way to get around efficiently besides walking, and announced this over breakfast. None of the other inhabitants of the Institute had seen anything wrong with this, so there they were out on the curb.

Jace snorted. "Please. I have several."

She glared, pulling on gloves worn with use. "Reassuring much?"

"You have me, I'm right here," he laughed. "I'm not gonna let you wreck my baby."

"And here I was hoping you'd say you weren't going to let me get hurt," she rolled her eyes, throwing her leg over the leather seat.

"That too." His voice took on a much different quality as he crouched next to her, eyes lighting up in the way they did whenever he was explaining something. In the bright morning, the sunlight cast the same effect on them as they would a shot of whiskey, illuminating their amber depths so they glowed. Her fingers twitched with the sudden urge to paint him as he was now, in cream and copper.

"…Clary, are you listening to me?"

She blinked rapidly. "Um. No."

Jace's shoulders slumped dramatically as he sighed before getting on the bike behind her, arms bracketing her as he grasped the handlebars. "The thing about motorcycles," he practically hummed in her ear, "is that you have to be smooth. Think smooth. Gentle. It's not like in the movies, you know."

She tensed as his hand came to wrap around hers, delicately maneuvering her wrist. "Shh, relax. So your right hand has both the acceleration and the brakes, right here. You want to twist your wrist gently, see, like this. Gently, I said. The lever here's for your front brakes, you use two fingers. There you go. Don't yank too hard, or you'll crash. Your right foot," he tapped her knee lightly, and she forced back a shiver, "has the back brake. You mostly use your front brakes, but we'll be going at low speed later, so you'll be using the back ones today. You following me?"

After a half an hour of stationary instruction, he'd finally persuaded her to try actual movement. "I… I don't know about this," she let out a small yelp as the bike growled and lurched underneath them, sliding forward.

"Relax, you're a natural," Jace said somewhere above her head, sounding proud. She could feel the rumbling rise and fall of his voice in her ribcage. "See? This isn't so bad."

She considered it as they cruised along the empty street. "You're right, it's really not that bad…" Clary gave the throttle an experimental tweak.

"Clary, are you sure –" His question was lost in the wind as the bike surged onward, her hair whipping around her in brilliant tendrils the color of scrubbed pennies as stores and buildings went by in a glorious blur, Jace's hands warm around hers.

It took her a moment to realize they were both laughing.

"Come on, Clary, turn left, we have to go back now," Jace's amused voice eventually filtered down to her.

She obeyed, albeit reluctantly, swinging the bike back down the curve of the street back to the church that was their sanctuary. "You never told me this was so much fun," she said accusingly as the bike came to a shuddering stop.

Without seeing him, she could tell he was rolling his eyes skyward as he hopped gracefully off the motorcycle. "Is this the same girl who was telling me over breakfast she was afraid she'd die a violent and flaming death if she even got on a motorcycle, let alone ride it? Do we have a growing thrill-seeker on our hands?"

"I'm not the one who goes charging into danger because it's exciting," she retorted. "In fact, I think you've corrupted me." Clary laughed, her legs shaking with residual adrenaline. She swung her leg off the motorcycle, but her knee clipped the top of the seat ungracefully.

Clary stumbled, and somehow she was in his arms, and he was kissing her.

His eyes were widened in surprise inches from her own, as if he'd never meant for it to happen, but his lips were moving against hers hard enough to bruise, and he'd reached up a hand to cup her jaw lightly in callused fingers that skated across her skin with infinite tenderness. He tasted like the maple syrup from the morning's pancakes and something salty-sweet and distinctively Jace.

She closed her eyes after that, because it was too much; too much as he made a noise of pleasant surprise when she daringly darted her tongue over his lower lip, too much as his teeth nipped at hers in playful retaliation. Too much as she tugged her gloves off hastily to discover if the curls at the back of his neck really felt like silk between her fingers, like she'd always thought, too much as his lips found and lingered by her pulse and her breathing hitched as her entire body trembled like the strings of a violin under his touch for a reason that had nothing to do with blisteringly fast motorcycle rides.

"We really shouldn't be doing this," Jace murmured as they pulled apart for breath.

She smiled. "You're right, Izzy would never let us live it down," Clary agreed against his lips, instinctively reaching out to pull him closer, but he didn't laugh like she expected.

"No, really." The warmth of his arms around her waist suddenly disappeared. "I'm sorry, Clary."

She scrunched her eyebrows in confusion. "Wait, what's wrong?"

All the light in him seemed to have faded as he looked down at her. "Another time, another place, maybe. But it won't work out. We can barely manage to live as it is, let alone work out – whatever it is we have."

"We're living on borrowed time already," Clary pointed out, crossing her arms. "Shouldn't that be incentive instead?"

He smiled wearily. "If the world hadn't ended, we never would have met."

"Are you saying that if things had been normal, we'd never be even interested in each other?" she spat out incredulously. "Jace, don't you care about me at all?"

"More than you know," he shook his head, leaning over to brush a flyaway strand of hair on her cheek. She resisted the urge to lean into his touch. "Please, Clary, don't make this harder than it is on me. Please."

Furious and confused, she tilted her head up to meet his gaze. "Forgive me, then," she bit out icily, "for being such a burden to you."

Ignoring the look in his eyes, she turned around and stomped away, slamming the doors of the church behind her.

They avoided each other as much as possible over the next couple of weeks. In their group of seven, it was surprisingly simple – especially when Jace seemed as hell-bent as staying as far away from her as possible as she was, training with Alec and apparently becoming new best friends with Jordan.

She'd thought she'd been doing a pretty good job at hiding her tumultuous feelings about the whole affair until Magnus had leaned over her shoulder as she read on the living room sofa after dinner and whispered, "Lovers' spat?"

A red line had appeared on her thumb where she'd sliced the skin as she turned the page abruptly. "Um… I have no idea what you're talking about."

Magnus' catlike eyes had narrowed slowly. "Hmm," he'd nodded, with that air that made him look so much older and wiser than his nineteen years, "no, you apparently don't." His lips had twitched thoughtfully as he looked over in front of the fire they'd recently started getting in the habit of lighting, as the heating unit had coughed and died a week ago.

She had followed his line of sight. Jace had apparently pestered and badgered the usually stoic Alec until the other boy had finally snapped and they were tussling good-naturedly on the threadbare rug like overgrown puppies. The firelight had brought out the brilliancy of Jace's hair, and his eyes, as they had met hers for the brief flash of a second, were bright with laughter, before they had darkened slightly as he registered her gaze.

She had turned away, swallowing hard. "It's… complicated."

Given the fact that she had been trying her hardest to not pay attention to his comings and goings, she hadn't noticed that Jace and Alec were even gone the other day until they never showed up for dinner.

"They're probably just off fiddling with the bikes or something," Izzy had written it off, shrugging casually.

"Or, you know, avoiding your cooking," Jordan had mumbled in an undertone as Maia chuckled quietly, elbowing her boyfriend into silence at Isabelle's glare.

They hadn't shown up an hour after dinner, unabashedly grinning with smudges of grease on their hands and faces, proclaiming their ravenous hunger.

They hadn't shown up two hours later, either.

Uneasy, Clary had gone upstairs and found her sketchpad, balancing it on her knees. Her sketches were a contained world onto themselves, tiny, controllable facsimiles of the real thing, simplified down to lines and shape, perspective and the many shades between black and white. She had focused on the creamy ivory of the blank page, losing herself shading the brindle coat of an enormous wolf.

Her pencil had gone veering off the page as Isabelle screamed.

" – you did what?!" Isabelle had been screeching as she'd run into the sanctuary.

Alec and Jace had been leaning heavily on each other. At first that was all she'd seen, just the two best friends, arms around each other's shoulders, standing just in front of the doors, as if Izzy had stopped them as they walked in.

And then she'd noticed the blood dripping onto the floor.

Clary had looked up and found the shadows she had written off as being cast by their dark clothing were bruises blooming across collarbones and cheekbones, networking across skin that was paler than usual, the way they had been leaning not out of affection, but more like the only things keeping them from falling to the floor were each other. Alec had shifted his weight completely onto his left side, right foot dangling off the ground with an air that on anyone else would have looked casual, and Jace had been holding his arm strangely, his shoulder stiff.

He must have seen the look on her face somehow, because he had smiled lopsidedly – she tried not to wince at how this revived a cut on his lip – and hastily said, "Don't worry, most of the blood's not ours."

Isabelle had made a delicate scoffing noise. "Most?"

"What – what the hell did you do?" Clary had demanded, once she had regained her voice.

"A building may or may not have fallen on us," Jace had admitted, as the both of them started hobbling towards the kitchen.

Alec had been biting his lip so fiercely it was a wonder he hadn't broken the skin yet. "Don't look at me like that, Izzy, it was obviously not my idea."

"You let him do it anyway," Isabelle had hissed, but she'd helped them over the threshold anyway.

Her cry had apparently roused the entire household, however, as Magnus and a bedraggled Maia and Jordan were arriving with strangled noises of horror. The dinner dishes had been immediately swept away under a tide of bowls of hot water and towels, piles of fresh bandages and dishes of some Oriental herbal poultice Magnus insisted on making. It had been beginning to smell like a hospital before Alec had snapped that they were indeed, despite all evidence to the contrary, not mortally wounded, and the best thing in mind for all of them was sleep.

Except, of course, two hours later, she couldn't sleep. She'd felt the restlessness climbing up her spine as she'd padded up the stairs and down the hallway to her bedroom, had sensed the familiar ghost of insomnia was perching on her shoulder, but she'd tried in vain as she curled into her blankets. There, she'd tossed and turned until eventually, she slid out of bed, curling her toes at the coolness of the hardwood floor.

Clary crossed the room, slipping out hallway and shutting the door quietly behind her. Light from the ancient sconces set into the wall illuminated her way as she lightly padded down the hallway.

Her feet stopped as if of their own accord in front of a familiar door, and she almost laughed at the irony, remembering a night that had been broken with a panel of yellowish light glimmering across her bed. Bracing herself, she opened the door, entered, and shut it quickly.

"Jace?"

He was awake instantly, she saw, the flicker of metal shining in his hand. "Can I talk to you?"

"Clary?" The knife clattered back onto the bedstand. "Yeah. Sit down."

She perched lightly on the edge of the mattress obediently. He struggled to a sitting position, letting out a barely audible hiss as he moved. "You – you didn't take any painkillers?"

He chuckled in the dark. "No. I have a very high pain threshold. You know that."

She did. She also knew he was much too proud and stubborn to take anything even if he was in pain. Her hair skimmed her bare shoulders as she shook her head in frustration. "God, you're such an idiot."

Even if she couldn't quite see him, she could feel him raising a sardonic eyebrow in the blackness. "You came here in the middle of the night to insult me?"

"Yes!" The answer rang out before she could stop herself. "No. I don't know. Just – what on earth happened?"

He shrugged, moonlight clipping the one good shoulder as it lifted casually. "I don't go looking for danger, it just finds me." She made a dubious noise, and he chuckled again. "I just have this magnetism, you know." His tone turned serious. "If you have to know, Alec and I were checking out an abandoned building for more survivors. We thought we heard someone calling for help."

"Alone?" Now it was her turn to raise her eyebrows incredulously. "What were you thinking?"

"It looked fine," he said dismissively. "And it was. Really. Until the building collapsed. Must have been too old. Couldn't handle me, I guess."

Clary scoffed. "I don't believe you." Her hands clutched the blanket convulsively. "I really don't. You're crazy."

"It really wasn't that bad –"

"It was!" She cut him off, not caring how her voice raised angrily. "I can't believe you're joking about this! You could have died."

He was quiet for a few seconds. "Clary," he started, and if it had been anyone else, she would have sworn he was almost hesitant. "Clary, why are you crying?"

"I'm not."

"You sound near tears." His voice gentled. "Come here."

Reluctantly she slid closer. He leaned forward, his breath ghosting over her cheeks. "Clarissa, why are you crying?"

She couldn't take it any longer. She reached out, the lines of his jaw firm under her palms, and pulled him to her, slanting her mouth over his.

Almost automatically his lips softened against hers, his hand climbing up to pull her hair of its ponytail, slender pianist's fingers twining in the curls before they paused.

"Clary," he panted against her lips, "I told you we shouldn't do this."

She shook her head vehemently. "I don't care," she growled, "I don't care, I don't care if you think this is crazy, because that's what we are, and I don't care if you think we can't make this work, because we can. I'm tired of holding back, Jace. I'm tired of pretending that I don't care about you."

He was the one that surged against her at that, but it was still too gentle, still too restrained. She pushed back with everything that she has, every single ounce, biting down hard and licking away the copper taste of blood.

Clary wished she could see him, but even in the blackness his eyes were glowing like embers and she could spend her rest of her life watching how they were darkening into deep amber, slivers of gold around enormous pupils. He kissed her hard enough to bruise, all clacking teeth and tongue, and suddenly it was war as she fisted her hands in the soft material of his shirt, feeling much too far away. The heat of his body was a siren's lure, the racing rhythm of his heart under her hands intoxicating as his breath slid over her skin. He planted open-mouthed kisses with just enough suction to drive her absolutely mad along her jaw and down the side of her neck with devastating precision, but she smirked in short-lived triumph as he gasped when she tugged just so on his curls at the back of his head. The way he whispered her name into the dimple above her collarbone after he nipped it is the best song she'd ever heard, and if the fingers digging the skin two inches above her hipbones left bruises in the morning, she'd wear them proudly.

He pressed a smirk into her skin as she arched under his touch, but then she was suddenly aware of his teeth flashing white in the dark in a grimace. She reached out, tracing his cheekbones lightly and humming in concern as he leaned into her touch. "You really ought to sleep," she whispered, sliding off his lap.

"Since when have I ever done what I ought to do?" he murmured obstinately, but obediently laid down anyways. "Stay with me?"

She curled into his side, pressing her lips chastely to his jaw. "I'll stay as long as you want."

He turned slowly to face her, resting on his good shoulder. "Does this mean you forgive me for earlier."

"Shut the hell up, Herondale," she snapped in a whisper, nestling so the top of her head fit under his chin. His arms wrapped around her lazily. "I'm sure you can think of ways to make it up to me."

He chuckled into her hair. "Challenge accepted, Fray," he said lightly. She smiled before yawning. "Goodnight, Clary."

The next week passed by in an euphoric blur.

Jace turned out, rather predictably, to be the worst patient ever, insisting on getting out of bed the very next day, much to her own chagrin. However, since he wasn't exactly seriously wounded, nobody really minded. Even more embarrassingly, they didn't really seem to mind when Magnus caught them kissing in the library two days later.

He had merely winked and said, "I knew it," before stalking out with some rather rude comments about preserving the integrity of age-old books.

"You're awful," she had informed Jace afterwards, smoothing down her ruffled hair.

Jace had merely put on his most innocent expression, looking just about as angelic as a lamb, were it not for the smirk. "Hey, I was reading. It's not my fault you jumped me in the library."

"God, you're lucky you're cute," she'd griped, rolling her eyes skyward.

He had tugged her over to him by the waist. "I am not cute. Witty, yes. Clever, yes. Handsome, yes. Cute? No."

Clary had given him an exasperated look. "You're ridiculous."

"You wouldn't have it any other way," he'd laughed, kissing the corner of her mouth until she had finally given in and smiled.

Outside, as winter neared, the undead grew by the day, the city she'd spent her whole life in decaying and crumpling slowly like the massive skyscrapers were made of children's construction paper. But it was hard not to think of the Institute, their personal sanctuary, as a whole other world altogether, the greenhouse flowers and vegetables blooming under Magnus' surprisingly watchful eye, Maia and Jordan on the most ridiculous bookstore raids to find Isabelle simple cookbooks. Even taciturn Alec had warmed towards her somewhat, his dry sense of humor appearing more often than not.

Not to mention the last thing she saw every night and the first thing she saw every morning was a pair of mischievous golden eyes.

She was drawing late one night, lying on her stomach in Jace's bed, sketching as he lay in front of her, reading Dante's Inferno, their legs lazily tangled together, when she realized the feeling that was rising in her chest so often now was contentment. She was happy, she realized, happy in this huge labyrinthine church-that-wasn't-a-church, happy even when the world had ended, because life had kept going on. Happy, because she loved him.

"You're staring at me," Jace observed, not even glancing up from his page. "Why are you staring at me?"

Clary stretched across to press her lips to his, loving the way his body tensed in pleasant surprise and he blinked rapidly the way a swimmer blinks when he's rising out of the waves, book forgotten as he kissed her back slowly, languidly, comfortably. "Nothing. Nothing at all."

When the soles of her boots had given out running from yet another overrun grocery store, they went on a raid looking for a new pair.

It was the two of them, walking through the slush and snow. For the first time this year, she had been dismayed to find it snowing, as had the rest of the Institute's inhabitants – winter meant less food to stretch around the seven of them, less warmth, and the necessity of more raids even as most of their original gathering places had become new dens for the undead.

She entered the mall, shivering only slightly in her layers of sweaters and scarves, and headed straight for the shoe stores with the same nonchalance she would have shown had the place been glowing with neon and florescent lights and bustling with people like it once had been. How times have changed, she thought drily, peering through the darkened store for combat boots in her size.

"I never understood why women liked shoes so much," Jace remarked wryly, twirling his gunblade around a finger absent-mindedly.

"Don't you find heels sexy?" she huffed, sliding a box one of the higher shelves and trying them on. Perfect.

"Depends on the girl wearing them," he shrugged before tensing. "Clary."

"Yeah?" She looked up from tying the laces, tossing her bangs out of her eyes. "I love this pair. It's so comfortable."

He was tensed, coiled like a cobra, weight shifted to the balls of his feet as he bent his knees slightly. "That's good, because we have to go."

Clary walked out of the store slowly, coming to stand next to him. They were gathered in the shadows on the upper floor, shuffling down the steps of the spiraling stairs she'd once found so charming. If their faces had still been capable of expression, she would have called the look in their eyes something between predatory glee and naked hunger.

"Run!" He took her hand and they galloped for the exit, leaping through the open doors and careening down the street.

Jace was working up a steady stream of curses as they zigzagged through. "I swear that place was clean when we went there yesterday, they're growing far too fast for my liking, fuck it, why didn't we take the bikes?"

They climbed up the rattling metal fence at the end of an alley, her feet stinging with the impact through the soles of her new boots as they jumped down on the other side, the zombies coming up against the wirework, their moans of protest rising up towards the gray sky.

"They're stuck back there. We're fine." she sagged against a brick wall to catch her breath. "Mmm, now I want a hot shower."

He laughed, sending a billow of curling white into the air. "Is that an invitation, Clary?" Jace slung an arm around her shoulder as they picked their way out of the alley and back onto the street.

She bumped her shoulder against his side teasingly. "Hey, last time we did that, Izzy almost caught us. In fact, I think she knew. You have no idea how many of weird looks I got from her when we were cooking dinner."

He shrugged. "We're doing her a favor, though, really. Water conservation and all that. Plus, it's not like she says anything to Maia and Jordan."

Her peal of laughter quickly transformed into a scream as a zombie lurched out of a side-alley she hadn't even noticed, its mouth gaping wide.

Jace was already leaping forward, gunblade slashing through dull flesh, the brilliant metal of the dagger obscured in blackish blood. He didn't have to tell her to run as he took her hand, the both of them firing into the crowd that was spilling out into the street.

They bolted, flying down the pavement and down yet another side-alley. A year ago she'd have never made it, but now she was stomping through the refuse of an overturned trash bin, navigating the twisting turns with confidence.

"Keep going, keep going," Jace panted behind her before she vaulted over a low brick wall. They hurdled through a series of long-abandoned yards, streaking through the weeds that were choking rose bushes that had probably been someone's pride and joy, climbing arduously up a fire escape. She jumped off a small store's roof and rolled onto the top of a trash bin, heart pounding in her chest as she crawled out and headed down the alley that she knew would lead home.

"Jace, we made it, we made it," she panted, leaning forward to place hands on knees. "Jace?"

Clary turned around slowly. "God, Jace, you better watch out, even I'm outrunning you now," she teased, coming up to him.

He recoiled as soon as she got within three feet. Pausing in surprise, she looked up to find his gaze steely. "Don't get any closer."

Jace's hands were flexing at his sides uneasily. A thin rivulet of scarlet was twining down his wrists like a streak of her own paint, staining his fingers slowly.

"No," she shook her head vehemently. "No."

His shoulders had lost their usual proud, upright line. "I don't know when it happened." She heard what he really meant. _I don't know how long I have._

She forced a weak smile. "Jace, don't be ridiculous, it could just be from falling off that roof, or, or, or – "

" – I know what it is. Trust me," his voice was so, so quiet. She didn't want quiet, she wanted his obnoxious comments, she wanted his explosive laughter vibrating in her bones, she wanted his sarcasm, anything but this stillness.

She held out her hand for his gunblade. "At least let me do it."

Jace retreated, jerking back as if hurt. "No," he gave her a bitter smile. "This is one thing you cannot do for me. When you kill someone you care about, they haunt you, waking or sleeping, forever. I would never wish that on you."

"Who says I wouldn't want that?" she whispered in a breath.

He looked at her. "Oh, _Clary_."

She'd always loved the way he said her name, the hard c, the singsong of the two syllables. Sometimes he made it sound like a war cry, urgent and angry and far away, like she was a lighthouse and he was a ship lost at sea, and sometimes it was a teasing warning before his arms wrapped around her as he nuzzled her cheek playfully. Now it was a whisper, a prayer, an "I love you" that should have been whispered in her hair on a moonlit night and now never would be.

"Clary, I want you to do one last thing for me. Will you? Please?"

She bit down on her lip hard. "You know I will."

He smiled. Radiantly, like the way he'd done it a thousand times over at her, as he woke up, his hair mussed and the sunlight in his eyes. "Start running and don't look back. Understand? Don't look back, whatever you do. Promise me."

"I promise." _I love you too_.

She soaked up the way he looked, in that moment, all flyaway blond curls rumpled by their run, the strong angled lines of his face that she had traced so many times, the way he looked in all black, the way his golden eyes were doing the same thing to her.

His mouth unfurled in one last smirk. "Go on. And don't look back. Remember, Clary."

Not trusting herself to speak, she turned around slowly and started to run.

The gunshot retort echoed in her ears.


End file.
